FBI Paints Chilling Portrait
Of Anthrax-Attack Suspect

By

Evan Perez,

Siobhan Gorman,

Gary Fields and

Elizabeth Williamson

Updated Aug. 7, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- In a series of court documents that were at turns chilling and bizarre, federal investigators said U.S. Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins misled government agents investigating the 2001 anthrax mailings, sent emails with language closely matching the handwritten letters sent to victims and had access to the strain of anthrax used in the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says the evidence, including hundreds of pages of unsealed documents, proves that Dr. Ivins was the sole person responsible for the 2001 anthrax mailings. Many of the documents contain previously unknown details and shed fresh light on the seven-year investigation, one of the most complex and controversial undertaken by federal law enforcement.

The Evidence

ENLARGE

A containment unit at Fort Detrick used to quarantine workers who may have been infected with a disease.
Associated Press

Affidavits filed in support of search warrants at different stages in the case summarize the available evidence up to those points.

Much of the evidence is circumstantial and was criticized sharply by some scientists and former colleagues, suggesting that this long-running saga is far from over. Dr. Ivins's lawyer denies the charges.

Dr. Ivins, one of the world's foremost anthrax experts, emerged as the central figure in the anthrax probe last week. He committed suicide on July 29 after federal prosecutors informed him they intended to charge him in the attacks that killed five people and injured 17. Investigators haven't found a suicide note.

The most compelling evidence points at Dr. Ivins and his laboratory at the U.S. Army biodefense facility at Fort Detrick, Md. It includes DNA evidence that links a flask to which Dr. Ivins had access to the anthrax used in the letters, as well as envelopes purchased in the Fort Detrick area. The FBI also presented evidence that Dr. Ivins spent an unusually large amount of time in the anthrax lab late at night just before the attacks and that he submitted incomplete samples for analysis.

On Sept. 26, 2001, Dr. Ivins sent an email that read, "Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans." The anthrax letters, sent days later, contained similar wording: "WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX . . . DEATH TO AMERICA . . . DEATH TO ISRAEL." The note would have been a central part of any possible court case, the FBI said.

Other evidence in the court documents -- which were mostly affidavits relating to search warrants -- appears less convincing. These include emails and documents that suggest an obsession with a sorority with a branch near the mailbox where the tainted letters were mailed. Despite the many pages of evidence, Dr. Ivins's motive remains one of the biggest unresolved mysteries.

In addition, more than 100 people had access to the anthrax in question, a larger number than many had previously believed. The FBI didn't find any anthrax spores in Dr. Ivins's three cars or in his house.

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor acknowledged that the case was circumstantial but said prosecutors around the country obtain convictions on circumstantial evidence "every day." He said there was no physical evidence that tied the researcher to the mailbox in Princeton where the letters were mailed, but said authorities reached a "reasonable conclusion" that it was possible he had done so, based on his past actions. That included mailing packages from remote places using assumed identities, as well as corresponding with the media and Congress.

As for motivation, Mr. Taylor said one possibility is that Dr. Ivins wanted to create a scenario where people would realize the need for a vaccine program. Dr. Ivins was working on such a program, which had been suspended because of its rumored links to sickness in Gulf War veterans.

Cast Your Vote

"The government would have the American people believe that after seven years and more than $15 million of taxpayer money, they have found the individual responsible for the heinous attacks of the fall of 2001," Mr. Kemp said in a statement. "Nothing could be farther from the truth."

Some scientists familiar with the FBI's work said they found the evidence convincing. Many colleagues, however, who expressed skepticism about the focus on Dr. Ivins ever since it became public, weren't convinced.

"Scientifically, it's completely superficial," said Gerard Andrews, who headed the institute's bacteriology division where Dr. Ivins worked from 2000 to 2003.

Jeffrey Adamovicz, Dr. Andrews's successor, said the documents presented a good case for a search, but didn't prove Dr. Ivins was responsible for the attacks. "What were the results of all these tests?" he said. "Did they find any strains in his car or his home? You cannot say 'case closed' just because you present your search warrants, that's just not enough."

Dr. Adamovicz noted that Dr. Ivins was also part of the team investigating the anthrax attacks; a sample from the letter to then-Sen. Tom Daschle was analyzed in his lab: "It's like accusing the coroner of having blood on his hands."

Paranoid Thoughts

The court documents paint a picture of a tormented man who suffered "serious mental health issues in the months preceding the attacks." In a series of emails dating from 2000 and 2001, Dr. Ivins talks about his "depression" and his various prescription medications, including the antidepressant Celexa.

In August 2000, he wrote to an unidentified correspondent, "I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs."

In late 2001, he emailed a series of short poems ruminating to the theme of popular songs about what he called his split personality:

"I'm a little dream-self, short and stout.

I'm the other half of Bruce -- when he lets me out.

When I get all steamed up, I don't pout.

I push Bruce aside, then I'm Free to run about!"

ENLARGE

At least seven anthrax-laced letters were sent to lawmakers and the media from a mailbox near Princeton University in New Jersey. The attacks stoked fears of a new wave of terrorism weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The evidence released Wednesday is only a partial sample of the body of work investigators accumulated as they chased hundreds of leads and conducted thousands of hours of interviews.

ENLARGE

The FBI now faces a major challenge: making its version of events stick over the many competing narratives that have arisen in the intervening years, and over its own prior mistakes. For years, the FBI focused on another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, only to pay out a multimillion dollar settlement this year, in essence clearing his name.

"We believe we could have proven Dr. Ivins's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," said Mr. Taylor, the U.S. Attorney. "We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury."

To determine the source of the anthrax, the FBI assembled a task force of government and academic researchers, who found that the anthrax in the letters bore four telltale mutations. The FBI team then obtained and tested more than 1,000 samples of anthrax taken from 16 domestic laboratories as well as additional labs in Canada, Sweden and Britain.

The FBI research team found only eight samples with all four mutations. Every one of those eight samples was related to a single batch of anthrax spores, identified as RMR-1029. Dr. Ivins, according to the affidavit, was the "sole custodian of RMR-1029 since it was first grown in 1997." Law-enforcement officials said more than 100 other scientists also had access to this stock.

George Weinstock, an expert in microbial genetics at Washington University at St. Louis who was not involved in the investigation, reviewed the affidavit and said he believes the evidence is "pretty strong." But he would like to see the actual data to get a better understanding of how rare it truly is for these four mutations to be present in a batch of anthrax.

An important part of the government case, investigators say, was Dr. Ivins's attempt to mislead them when they sought samples of the anthrax from his laboratory. In February and April 2002, Dr. Ivins submitted samples of anthrax that the FBI tested and found didn't match the anthrax retrieved from the mailings.

In 2004, after agents learned Dr. Ivins had held back samples, an FBI agent went to his lab, seized the flask of bacteria and submitted it for testing. The FBI says testing showed the material from the flask matched the anthrax used in the mailings. Agents confronted Dr. Ivins with this information in April 2004 and March 2005. Both times, read the affidavit, "Dr. Ivins was adamant in his response that there had been no omission."

Late-Night Access

FBI agents also collected evidence of Dr. Ivins's late-night access to a special containment suite that scientists used for dangerous laboratory work. Agents used laboratory access records to construct a graph showing that Dr. Ivins's visits to his lab spiked in September and October of 2001, spending hours at a time after his normal shift ended at 4:45 p.m.

ENLARGE

The three days beginning Sept. 17, 2001, Dr. Ivins worked to around midnight on two nights, and remained until nearly 10 p.m. on the final night, a Sunday. Agents suggested this provided ample opportunity for him to conduct the work needed to manufacture the anthrax.

Much of the other evidence tied Dr. Ivins only loosely to the attacks. For motivation, the FBI suggested he might have had a grudge against NBC, one recipient, because of the network's reporting on his vaccine. It also said Dr. Ivins disliked, to the point of obsession, a sorority which had a chapter at Princeton, and that he added multiple derogatory references to the sorority's Wikipedia page.

The sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, has an office 60 feet from the blue mailbox where the anthrax mailings originated, investigators said. Although investigators can't prove that Dr. Ivins actually mailed the letters from there, Mr. Taylor, the U.S. attorney, defended the link.

Significant Find

Late in the investigation, a search of Dr. Ivins's home turned up "hundreds of hand-written or typed letters to/from Dr. Ivins to/from various members of society," from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, including letters to several senators and to news organizations, according to documents. This is significant, the documents say, because the anthrax letters were sent to senators and news media, and included the addressee's four-digit ZIP Code extension, which showed, in the investigators' view, "knowledge by the mailer for reaching a specific person in the United States Senate."

Randall Larsen, director of the Institute for Homeland Security, a Virginia think tank, said the FBI's evidence and comments thus far don't make a complete case. "I am disappointed. I would have slept better tonight knowing it was Ivins, and not al Qaeda or some other group still out there," he said.

As to the spike in the evenings Dr. Ivins spent in the lab, Dr. Andrews, who was division chief at the time, said he didn't find it unusual. "He could have gone into the suite in the evenings because he wanted peace and quiet," Dr. Andrews said.

Ramesh Patel, whose wife, Jyotsna Patel, was one of the New Jersey postal workers hospitalized after inhaling anthrax, said he believed the case offered against Dr. Ivins, a feeling echoed by other victims. "All roads really lead to this scientist," said Mr. Patel, who said he was particularly convinced by evidence of Dr. Ivins's unusual work patterns ahead of the attacks and the portrait of his mental state.

On Capitol Hill, FBI officials spent more than an hour briefing a packed room of more than 100 congressional aides and at least one member of Congress, Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.), according to two people who attended. Among the questions they asked: Why did the FBI not arrive at Dr. Ivins sooner, after finding out in 2004 about his seemingly deceitful behavior? The FBI said the delay came from having to rule out more than 100 people who also had access to the flask.

New Jersey Democrat Rep. Rush Holt, who was briefed by phone by FBI Director Robert Mueller, said there are "still big questions" about whether Dr. Ivins acted alone. "So maybe there is still a murderer at large." Mr. Holt's district is home to some of the anthrax victims and to the mailbox where the letters were mailed. "My measure of when we can call this case closed is when the people of central New Jersey...feel that they have closure. I would say so far it's probably not good enough to put all their fears to rest."

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